p class="">In children's stories a troll is a fearful, loathsome, and
darkly dangerous creature that lurks in the shadows and eats hapless kids who
come within reach as they go about their business. In the blog-o-sphere of the
adult world a troll is a darkly dangerous writer who lurks in discussion
threads. Most trolls are relatively harmless though somewhat parasitic. They
tend to lurk in threads that have made the headlines of the site and their aim
is to exploit the interest and popularity of the headlines to forward a pet
argument or issue.

Some trolls are more sinister. Rarely, they are skilled
debaters with a covert agenda of disinformation and they lurk to sabotage and discourage open
inquiry. They may even be hired guns engaged to lobby for a point of view. Examples
include the occasional Monsanto partisan seen on OEN. Most commonly they are
believers in an extreme point of view that sally forth to do battle for the
cause; and the cause may have little to do with the topic at hand. (Think of
how 9-11 discussions creep into popular threads.)

Why are trolls to be feared, and why do they cause so much
disruption and tribulation? Some trolls
like drama, and the rest of us are too easily drawn into the fray. Perhaps we
too like the drama of a good fight, not unlike the lure of the children's
fable. Kids like to hear stories like the Three Billy goats
Gruff over and over because there is drama and suspense, but they
know, having heard the story before, that all ends well for the goats and not
so well for the troll.

Drama trolls are more annoying than fearful. They are easily
dispatched. Folks seem to be much more fearful of covert trolls - the ones who
masquerade as convivial like-minded writers but have a hidden agenda. They seek
to infect the discussion with pernicious ideas that ensnare the unwary. They
are the propagandists and spin-meisters, the insidious deceivers who weave seductively
persuasive arguments, who introduce disruptive facts and alternative analysis.
They create trouble and doubt. They strike unharmonious notes. They set friend
against friend. We are inclined to say they don't belong; they are unwelcome
outsiders and should go hang out on other blog sites where their misguided
thinking is more welcome.

- Advertisement -

Whoa! Wait a minute. There's something wrong here. Covert trolls? Can anyone, no matter how
guileful, force us to change what we think? Force
us? Don't you and I have the final say on what we choose to believe and what we
choose to reject? Can I, change your mind? Who's to blame if you do change your
mind? Surely the culprit is not the
beguiling troll.

But maybe trolls can slyly influence our beliefs. Such a
person can gain our trust and we may uncritically accept their views and adopt
them. That's often how it works with our parents. One of the jarring
discoveries of adolescence is the realization that mom and dad are actually often
wrong, poorly informed and lacking in insight. As a teen I was aghast at the
evident stupidity of my parents. The aftershock comes as a young adult when we
discover the same flaws in ourselves.

That preadolescent naive trust is not authentic trust, and
we are shocked at the betrayal. Simple trust is not what is called for in adult
conversation. We need to be prudent about the cordial hypocrites, the deceivers
and the outright psychopaths who can be covert trolls. To recognize them we
must think critically -- learn to recognize disinformation and deception by the
content, not the trusted source alone.

- Advertisement -

Not everyone who disagrees with our community of progressive
beliefs is actually a troll, no matter how tempting it may be to label
disruptive contributors that way. It's easy to dismiss someone for their troll-ness
so that we do not have our own beliefs confronted by what seems like heresy. To
dismiss someone is insulting to them and is intellectual laziness or worse yet,
cowardice on our part.

One of my favorite examples is Cass Sunstein. People on OEN seem
to either love him or see him as the Uber-troll of government control. He's a
prolific writer and researcher, and he openly advocates for deliberative
democracy and transparency. But some see him as an advocate for covert
operations; specifically they point to an early paper where he contemplates
infiltrating extremist groups and infecting them with ideas that weaken their
structures of insularity.

Dangerous? Subversive? Only if you're inside the extremist group, and
then only if you doubt your competence to recognize that someone is being deceptive
and inauthentic.

Or just maybe, the
prospect of infiltration is dangerous and fearful because the
"infiltrator" actually has a better grip on reality and truth than
you and your fellow believers do in the cloister of the echo chamber. It's
comfortable to surround ourselves with like-thinking friends. The cozy community
of agreement becomes scary when an intruder makes us question our shared
beliefs.

I recall the McCarthy era. Many in our
nation were fearful of communists infiltrating our society and nefariously undermining American institutions.
Communists and communist sympathizers were the covert trolls of that era. They
included the late and beloved Pete Seeger and many other entertainers and
scholars who challenged the orthodoxy of the mainstream. It took America a long
time to see the McCarthy HUAC hearings as the inquisition that they actually
were and we "burned" far too many good men and women with undeserved public
scorn.

You and I can't defend ourselves from wrong ideas by
building walls, or burning books, or ostracizing those who disagree with our
orthodoxy. We can, however, equip ourselves to harvest the ideas that have
virtue and value in their own right, and reject those that are deceptive or
false and then proclaim our own truth. Therein lays wisdom.

- Advertisement -

As for the trolls, I say strive to become the biggest goat
that you can be; and have the self-trust and guts to head butt those pesky
trolls be they covert or blatant . This
is the hero's role and the op-ed writer's calling.

Richmond Shreve is a retired business executive whose careers began in electronics (USN) and broadcasting in the 1960s. Over the years he has maintained a hobby interest in amateur radio, and the audio-visual arts while working in sales and (more...)